Business Page – December 1st,
2002

Execute Them!

Introduction

The dramatic title of
today’s column is not a call for the judicial or extra-judicial killing of
the remaining escapees, or of those so-called freedom fighters who have
joined in casting a spell of real life terror on the citizenry, or the drug
barons who seem to enjoy some kind of immunity, or the country’s
politicians on both sides who are so effective in taking Guyana forward to
extinction while cynically blaming the other. Nor is it intended to attract
readers to the newspapers – it is conveniently tucked away in or around
page fourteen far away from the groundbreaking banner headline or the sports
pages celebrating West Indies cricket revival until the next debacle.

Indeed the sensational words
are really an innocuous plea to our managers at all levels to get down to
the job for which they were elected or recruited and for which they are
paid. That job is to deliver results which can only come about as the
consequence of the single minded pursuit of execution – getting things
done.

For the past two decades
conventional wisdom has led us to believe that top management was somehow
not about management but about vision and leadership. Considerable research
and mountains of literature sought to distinguish between the leader and the
manager. In essence the leader was characterised as the one who perches
himself atop the highest tree, scans the horizon and sets the direction into
which he wants the organisation to go while he heads off to play golf,
engage in sometimes reckless acquisition or new venture, or public relations
jaunt that promotes the interest of his own image rather than add value to
the company and increase the wealth of shareholders. The manager on the
other hand would have the more mundane task of cutting, plowing, swimming,
sometimes drowning, sweating, tripping and then finally reach the goal set
by the leader. Then the process begins all over again.

Cult Of The Leader

For over twenty –five
years that wisdom prevailed and we witnessed the development of the cult of
the leader in business to the point where politicians sought out
opportunities to be seen in company and consultation with these idols. How
can we forget that Kenneth Lay of Enron was a close friend of the Bushes and
that Jack Welch who was voted the manager of the last century was constantly
courted by successive Presidents. This happened in Guyana too and we recall
former President Hoyte giving pride of place to some leading private sector
personalities and that the late President Jagan also courted some other
icons in the private sector with whom he was more comfortable.

At least in the United
States, the thinking particularly after Enron, Worldcom, Xerox etc,has shifted dramatically and figures put out by companies are now
regarded with considerable suspicion. No longer are the head honchos of
these organisations allowed to write their own salary cheques and set their
own retirement compensation. Rather, they are now required to attest to the
accuracy and reliability of their company’s financial statements, their
audit committees and the word “independent” to describe directors are
now being taken far more seriously.

This wave of accountability
has assumed international proportions and CEO’s are being fired with
frightening frequency. In 2000, over twenty percent of bosses lost their
jobs because of poor performance and this percentage rose to 37% in 2001.
And the average tenure of CEO’s of the world’s top companies has shrunk
from 9.5 years to 7.3 years over the space of the last six years. No longer
are institutional investors and major lenders prepared to sit idly and allow
their value to be eroded by all powerful CEO’s. They now exert immense
pressure for results and swiftly move against those CEO’s who fail.

The annual publication the World
in 2003 published by the Economist, is predicting that businesses will
return to basics in emphasising content and results over style and form and
noted that even the dressing down which had become so popular after Silicon
Valley set the trend in the early nineties is being swiftly reversed.
According to the Economist corporate managers will measure their success by their
ability to solve nuts and bolts problems, meeting their bottom line targets
and getting people to buy their products.

It is unlikely that this
prediction is based on the fact that one of the more recent management books
has the bald title Execution.
That the book brings together a protégé of Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy and
Ram Charran, an advisor to some of the world’s leading companies will no
doubt help to shape the thinking among business advisors and academia over
the next few years. However it is worth noting that the National Association
of Corporate Directors of the USA has added execution as one of the areas on
which directors need to focus in their annual assessment. It is also
well-known that many so called concepts fed to the unsuspecting person
looking for quick fixes are merely the regurgitation of basic concepts
repackaged as the flavour of the month.

Whatever it is, there is a
strong case for substance over form and for leaders to be made accountable
for their mistakes as readily as they are credited with the successes of
their companies. Execution in the past has always been thought of as the
tactics function of the business while leaders dealt with strategic issues.
Execution however has to be embedded in the whole culture of the
organisation’s discipline and processes. You cannot argue that the leader
can be divorced from the organisation’s culture, discipline and systems.
Indeed the CEO ought to embody those very values and project them both
internally and externally.

If we want to measure the
importance of execution all you have to do is take two organisations in the
same type of business with similar strategies. In the computer business Dell
and Gateway make a very useful case study. Both Dell and Gateway had a
strategy of selling direct to the customers only after a confirmed order has
been received. What Michael Dell did however was execute with such precision
that Dell turns over inventory eighty times per year – just every four
days. This is between four and eight times the turnover achieved by its
competitors.

The Guyana Scene

While the political economic
and social climate for doing business in Guyana is indisputably
inhospitable, it is also true that had we had a larger core of dynamic
leadership and management, the seeds for our social and economic climate in
Guyana would not have been so easily nurtured.

We have a number of CEO who
year after year fail to deliver results. In Guyana and indeed in the rest of
the Caribbean CEO’s in the private sector are never fired and often are so
powerful that they effectively appoint those who legally have the power to
fire them! The average period of service of our CEO’s probably runs into
decades and sometimes a lifetime. Our CEO’s behave like politicians and
resist being honest and open to themselves and their stakeholders,
concealing some massive failures within their areas of successes. Often they
launch initiatives with such fanfare and ceremony that they can never
publicly accept failure.

It is not all doom and gloom
however. While we have had entrepreneurs who would easily make it into
Rogues Gallery, we have had some excellent examples of successful
entrepreneurs whose legacy is an example of wealth creation and economic
democracy. Peter D’Aguiar stands out in these respects while John
Fernandes who laid the foundation for the empire which still bears his name
did it in what is still a private company. His strong legacy is demonstrated
by the current Czar of the empire Chris Fernandes who is as good an executor
as one can get. Other examples of leaders who are also effective managers
include Deo Singh of Didco and KFC who was not only responsible for the
re-introduction of franchising in Guyana but has also been excellent in
executing a strategy to expand, consolidate and grow. The Bulkan brothers at
Precision are known for their attention to detail and acceptance of
responsibility for the quality of the products leaving their factory.

If you’re good, you’re good

David Granger has proved his
mettle with the monthly newsmagazine Guyana Review and David De Caires in
the newspaper business has made the Stabroek News into an institution among
Guyanese both at home and abroad. Frank De Abreu in distrubution sports and
social activities and Naim Nasir in bread and pastry manufacturing and
distribution, are some other examples of individuals who can conceive an
idea and then successfully implement it. Interestingly Granger, DeCaires and
Nasir all made it having completely changed careers proving that if you’re
good, you’re good.

George Jardim too qualifies
as a person who combines leadership with the ability to execute but with the
centre of his activities located on the East Coast Demerara and his emphasis
on high level skills and technology his company soon became a victim of
political instability, sterile economic policies and the wave of crime and
emigration.

Conclusion

The emphasis on execution as
an academic issue has much to do with marketing as it does with the
uncovering of the absence of substance in many top companies. Business Page
supports the concept of execution but total emphasis on this may ignore the
crucial role of the team and that the CEO is really only the first among
equals. There will always be persons who are great with ideas and concepts
while others like to deal with the details. It would be counter-productive
to try to make the ideas person into a detail person and vice versa. The
task facing any business is how to link strategy, people and operations to
achieve success. If that is what is meant by execution, then yes, let’s
execute.